The Latent Allure of the 70's.

Me, personally, I don't remember much from the 70's.

I was born in 1975.

I spent 1975 through 1976 being passed around a group of adults and searching out the tit. I also ate anything you handed, slept wherever I wanted and laughed at everything!

In 1976, I experimented, like many of my colleagues with walking and finally broke myself of the nasty habit of shitting my own pants. (What can I say, they were crazy times.) I grew my hair out long (like Nicholas on "Eight Is Enough!") and became a counter-culture, having long conversations with imaginary characters that only I could see. I was big into Sesame Street and listened to classic rockers like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. My favorite song was "The Bare Necessities" and I think that was one of the foundations of my adult philosophies.

Oh sure, it wasn't all peaches and roses, baby. Parents divorced in 1978 and that same year I was pretty convinced that a monster called Mr. Widemouth lived in my closet and wanted to eat me up. After one long night of cowering in fear from Mr. Widemouth, I risked dismemberment and went to pee in the bathroom. In the dark, I mistook my mothers closet for the potty and pissed all over her shoes. That was my low point. '78 was a hard year for me.

But I blossomed in 1979 in the the full expression of my hippy lifestyle. At the age of 4, I began pre-school where I enjoyed communal nap-times with my friends, elaborate pretend co-habitation scenarios with both boys and girls and developed a VERY early crush on Miss Robin, my pre-school teacher. I used the potty like a big boy and was very good at wiping my butt. I excelled in it, really. I was proud of my pee-pee and showed it to anyone who wanted to see it. I was also interested in other pee-pees and hoo-hoos. If you wanted to show them to me, I would be happy to take a gander at them, too. I guess you could say that other foundations of my adult philosophy were formed then, too.

As the American culture shook off the tacky, care-nothing, hairy-underbelly of the seventies and began to slide in the neon-lit, thin-necktied, high-gloss of the eighties, so too, did I grow up. By 1980, I was 5 and was also ready to upgrade my lifestyle too. I took baths alone, used the potty alone and fell into the monotonous work-a-day drone of being a first grader. Early to rise, off to school with my other co-workers, debating the important issues of Batman versus Superman, who was or wasn't retarded and what a boob felt like. At the end of a day, I would come back home from school to my mothers house and would watch tv or play Atari until my mom got home. On weekends, I would visit my dad and we would go see movies and eat fast food because each weekend with him was a celebration.

That was the seventies that I remember. I was pretty caught up in my own game, you know? I had my own bag of stuff going on and I missed out on the what the rest of the world was up to.

Saturday Night Live premiered in 1975 but I was well asleep before it came on.

Star Wars was released in 1978 but I couldn't follow plot or distinguish what or wasn't real in a movie, so it was lost on me.

There was a global oil crisis in 1979, but that didn't affect how far or fast my tricycle could get me.

Punk, disco, jazz-rock fusion and hip-hop were born, but I was busy singing about my "ABC's" to anyone who would "sing along with me".

When I got older, I was honestly embarrassed by the seventies that I knew. My dad had a bushy porn-star mustache. My mom dressed like Stevie Nicks. My grandmother emulated Tammy Wynette and everyone drove big, boat-sized cars. We watched Hee-Haw on tv and spoke poorly of the blacks. We went to church on Sundays... well... religiously. We concerned ourselves with the minutiae of family life. Birthdays. Holidays. Funerals. Everything was covered in polyester or was swaddled on thick, plush carpeting and was coated in matching brown and orange. People painted their homes in colors that didn't match or make any sense and looked to Holly Hobby for fashion advice. It was as if every man, woman and child in America said, "What would the world be like if nobody gave a shit what they looked like or where they lived?", explored that for a few years and then jolted themselves back to hyper-awareness in the 80's out of deep, deep embarrassment.

Lately, though, I've forgiven the tacky fucking seventies for what they were. A period of selfless experimentation and rejection of the tight-laced 50's and the wild 60's. We didn't trust our government anymore. We didn't trust our parents or our churches anymore. We were wild to set our own way and do our own thing and sometimes the explorations lead us down weird or unsightly places, oh, like "Elton John" rock performances or "Ziggy Stardust" or "KISS".

Now, when I see the clothes and the hippies and they actually look fun and funny to me. I would grow my hair into a ponytail right now, if I could. I dig the big moustache and the beards. I listen to Blind Faith, David Bowie and Curtis Mayfield. I like soul and jazz and funk. I could get stoned, sink into a bean-bag and listen to "Frampton Comes Alive" WAY TOO LOUD and be perfectly happy. "Do YOU feel like I DO?!?"

I recently saw "Zodiac" and while the murders weren't appealing at all, the grittiness and texture of the 1970's really spoke to me. I wanted to step into the movie and drink the bad coffee, watch the boring, toneless television, escape the pagers and cell-phones and ride around San Francisco in a big, yellow cab and just watch the city go by. I want to live in an apartment that isn't as jacked into the electronic world as my current apartment is. I don't want gadgets, ipod, gear-clocks and DVRs. I want wood-slat blinds, sexy-ass rock concerts, guilt-free cigarettes, hassle-free sex and Coca-Cola in a glass bottle.

Maybe I'm developing nostalgia for a decade that I only briefly visited. Maybe our culture has outgrown out disdain for the decade and embraced some of it's charms. I can't tell if this is an individual attitude of mine or a reflection of the current culture, in general. I am only now becoming aware of my own attraction to the 70's.

I.
Can.
Dig.
It.

Cheers,
Mr.B